But he’s got these ego problems, too, that seem to go along with that sort of thing. And there’s a touch of the seamy side there. I’ve even heard it said that that’s not his real name, that he’s got a record, and there’s more of Manson to him than Magus. I don’t know. He’s nominally a painter — actually a pretty good one. His stuff does sell.”

“You’ve met him?”.

A pause, then, “Yes.”

“What were your own impressions?”

“I don’t know. Well… I’m prejudiced. I can’t really say.”

I swirled the wine in my glass. “How come?”

“Oh, I wanted to study with him once. He turned me down.”

“So you were into this, too. I thought — ”

“I’m not into anything,” he snapped. “I tried everything at some time or other, I mean. Everybody goes through phases. I wanted to develop, expand; advance. Who doesn’t? But I never found it.” He unbent and took another gulp of wine. “Sometimes I felt that I was close, that there was some power, some vision that I could almost touch or see. Almost. Then it was gone. It’s all a lot of crap. You just delude yourself. Sometimes I even thought I had it. Then a few days would go by and I realized that I was lying to myself again.”

“All of this was before you met Julia?” He nodded.

“Right. That might be what held us together for a while. I still like to talk about all this bullshit, even if I don’t believe it anymore. Then she got too serious about it, and I didn’t feel like going that route again.”

“I see.”

He drained his glass and refilled it.

“There’s nothing to any of it,” he said. “There are an infinite number of ways of lying to yourself, of rationalizing things into something they are not. I guess that I wanted magic, and there is no real magic in the world.”